oh, but i know you care
by jlangblues
Summary: "He won't let her out of his sight. It's suffocating, maddening. Everywhere she turns, everywhere she moves, he's watching her." Stefan x Elena, circa early Season 3.


A/N: So, this is set early S3, when Stefan was compelled by Klaus. I guess just some behind the scenes moments, if you will? I've written fic for quite a while now, but never in the TVD fandom. Hope this turned out okay! Title is from an Ellie Goulding song; I don't own that or TVD.

-x-

He won't let her out of his sight. It's suffocating, maddening. Everywhere she turns, everywhere she moves, he's watching her. Like a hunter stalking his prey. It's enough to make her want to scream, and she does, regularly, because she knows the noise that sounds so loud to her resonates even louder to him and she's not above being immature at this point.

She starts singing loudly to the music, some Top 40 hit that she knows that he hates and he knows that she loves. She turns the music up, snaps her fingers, sings off key every chance that she can. She can see him out of the corner of her eye, can see his jaw clenching and his fingers gripping the steering wheel tighter.

This is his fault, anyway. She's perfectly capable of going grocery shopping on her own. If he insists on following her at all times, then she's just going to have to insist on annoying him at all times.

(She won't admit this, not to Damon, not to Bonnie, not to anyone. But she thinks that she likes to pester Stefan, frustrate him, because at least… at least that means that he's feeling something. And she thinks that's better than him feeling nothing at all.)

"You're bothering me, Elena," he says, as he turns the music down for the fifth time.

She shrugs, reaches a hand across the console so that she can flick the volume back up. He turns his head slightly, glares at her, his eyes narrowing and his brow furrowing.

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah? Well, you don't scare me, _Stefan_."

She tries to stuff as much condescension, as much annoyance into her tone as possible. But she can't look at him when she talks, can't meet his gaze when she says things like that. She just looks out the window, rests her head against it, takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

Her heart is pounding; she can practically feel it thudding against her skin, harried and out of control. She knows he can hear it. And she tries to calm herself down; she closes her eyes, thinks about nice, happy things, like bunnies and flowers and life.

Stefan lets out a laugh and he says something about how she needs to learn how to control herself. He sounds cold and mean and it's just. It's not him. Or at least, it's not the him that she wants him to be. But that Stefan's gone, gone, gone, and as everyone is so apt to tell her, as everyone so frequently reminds her, that Stefan's never coming back.

She wants to throw up. But she doesn't look over at him, though, won't give him the satisfaction of seeing her upset.

Because she does a good job for the most part, now, of not letting him see her cry. At the end of the day, he doesn't care and she's tired of trying to make him. It hurts too much. Elena remembers there used to be a time when there was absolutely no sound in the world that made her happier than hearing him laugh. That feels like a lifetime ago, though, a hazy memory that's trying to slip away from her grasp.

At this point, she almost wishes it would.

She glances over at him, and if she sounds bitter, it's because she is. "I'm sorry that my being able to feel things is so damn hilarious to you," she says, and her voice cracks but her gaze doesn't waver from his. She doesn't think she even blinks and she knows it's stupid, knows it's not worth anything, but she wants him to be the first one to look away this time.

They're stopped at a red light and Stefan, almost imperceptibly, turns the radio off. He doesn't say anything though, just stares at her. His eyes slowly shift downwards, agonizingly slow; her chin, her neck, her heart. He stares at it for a few seconds and Elena can almost feel herself start to blush, the red color creeping its way up to her cheeks as Stefan presses a hand against her chest. If her heart was racing before, it's pounding now, a staccato rhythm steadily beating against her skin.

He curls his fingers a bit, his fingertips digging into her shirt, her skin. He looks like he wants to say something and Elena wants to plead with him, fight with him, force him to say something – _anything_ – that shows her, that proves to her that he's not lost forever.

She doesn't, though. She can't. There are only so many times she can set herself up for failure with him, and she thinks she's exceeded the limit. And she turns her head away, then her body away, forcing herself to move closer to the car door. He drops his hand from her like he's been burned.

He lets out a deep sigh. The light turns green. And the moment's gone.

-x-

He says that he's thirsty. She's not sure if he's trying to be funny or serious – she can never really tell with him anymore, not like how she could in the past. So she ignores him, rolls over, tries to block out the sound of his voice.

He visits her sometimes in the morning. She's using the term 'visit' lightly, of course, because that word implies that he's a welcome guest in her house. And he's not, not anymore. But he keeps showing up, randomly, when she's least expecting his presence. She thinks that part of him enjoys this, enjoys catching her off guard and unassuming.

She can feels the bed dipping a bit, knows that he's lying beside her now. Closing her eyes tightly, she doesn't say anything when he repeats himself. But she cracks open her eyes eventually, peering at him through the locks of hair that are currently covering her face.

He's leaning back against the pillows, his arms hiding his face, and for a brief moment, an almost too quick moment, he looks exactly like the Stefan that she remembers. The one that used to sneak into her room before school, kiss her awake, whisper breathless words into her ear.

It hurts her to think of those moments. She doesn't want to and she almost – God, sometimes she thinks that she wants Damon to compel her just like he's compelled so many before, make her forget about Stefan, forget about everything.

But there's always that small part of her that holds her back, that stops her from letting go entirely. From letting _Stefan_ go entirely. Because she still hopes, no matter how dark and terrible things seem now, that someday he'll come back to her. She feels pathetic for thinking that, for hoping that. But she can't change how she feels, no matter how hard she tries.

(And she does try, daily, frequently, to get Stefan Salvatore out of her mind. It's like a never ending uphill climb that she doesn't think she'll ever win.)

He glances over at her, dropping his arms back down by his side. He flashes a smile at her, that stupid cocky smile that she wants to smack off from his face. She tells him that, too, in a blasé sort of tone that implies she's thought this very thing hundreds of times before.

He just smiles again and says, "Why don't you try, then?"

And he rolls over closer to her, so close that she can smell his cologne, the sweat on his body. He's in her space now, invading the little imaginary bubble that she's wrapped herself so protectively in for the past month that he's been like this.

She doesn't like being close to him now, not physically and certainly not mentally. Because that's when she gets hurt the most, you know, when she lets the hope that she's trying so desperately to stifle squeeze back into every ounce of her mind. And when he's close to her, when she can hear him breathing, feel his breath on her skin, it's almost like she forgets what he's become.

She can't let that happen. Not anymore. So she leans away from him and yet he leans in closer, and she scooches away from him so much that she almost ends up falling off the bed.

He's there within a second, of course; one hand cradling the back of her head, the other wrapped snug around her waist. She squirms, tries to get away, and he sounds frustrated when he says,

"If I let go of you right now, you'll fall and hurt yourself. Is that what you want?"

She doesn't answer that question directly, but keeps squirming, tries to kick her way out of his grasp. She says through gritted teeth, "Let go of me," in the darkest tone she can possibly manage. She looks him in the eye and she takes a deep breath and she doesn't let her voice crack like it did the other day in the car.

She says again, unwavering, "Stefan, let me _go_."

She doesn't think he actually will.

But he does. He lets her go and she falls to the floor, and when she looks back up to the bed, he's already gone, the window curtains fluttering in the otherwise still air of the room.

-x-

She failed a math test the other week. It's not surprising, of course. When you're busy fighting vampires and dealing with unruly ex-boyfriends, things like calculus tend to take a backseat.

Her teacher offers her extra credit though, says that if Elena can come up with the correct answers, he'll give her half the points back. So she spends her lunch period holed up in the library, trying to make some sort of sense out of her calculus book. But she's missed so much time, has put in so little effort to this school year, that the numbers and problems look like a foreign language to her.

It's frustrating, really. She's not a bad student. She's never failed a class before, and now she's hovering somewhere just between a D and an F, and for the love of God, could it be possible for her to stare at this question any longer without the answer just appearing to her spontaneously?

She hears some papers rustling beside her and she doesn't have to look over to know that Stefan's sitting beside her. Her shadow's been missing since this morning, since the incident in the bedroom (as she's taken to calling it in her mind), and she's wondered where he's been – but she won't give him the satisfaction of knowing that she cares.

She does have some self-control left, thank you very much, and the bruise that's starting to pickle on her hip tells her that she needs to maintain some when it comes to him.

He's silent for a moment before plucking the book out of her hands. She starts to protest it, tries to grab it from him, but he leans back in his chair so that the book's just out of her reach.

He glances up at her, smirks. "Manners, Elena. We're in a public place." And then he holds a finger up to his lips, shushes her.

She stares at him soundlessly. He's ignoring her, flipping through the pages of the book nonchalantly as he looks around the library. He tells her that he doesn't think he's been in this library, ever, and Elena says,

"Yes, well, some of us actually are concerned with graduating – those of us who haven't graduated before." And she leans across the table, out of her chair, snatches the book away from him a little more aggressively than needed.

He holds his hands up innocently, and he has that grin on his face again, the one that looks so much like Klaus' that it disturbs her. She looks back down at her notes and her book, tries to shake the feeling away, brushes a hand through her hair.

Stefan moves chairs to sit next to her, and before she knows it, his hand is pressing up against her hip, untucking the tiniest portion of her shirt so he can the bruise that's forming. He rubs his thumb across it absentmindedly, and he's peering at it, looking at it like it's an equation that he just can't figure out the answer to.

It's not like it's the biggest bruise in the world, maybe the size of a couple quarters; it's certainly not the most damaged that he's seen her. But he's touching her like she's porcelain and breakable and she has to remind herself, for the five thousandth time, that this is _not_ her Stefan and that he doesn't care about her any more than he cares about anyone else.

He looks up at her, and for a split second, she could almost swear that he looks ashamed. But she thinks she's just kidding herself, letting that hope get out of control again, because before she knows it the mask has come back over his face, and he says,

"You told me to do this."

It's like he's accusing her or something, trying to force her to believe that she's the one who's in the wrong; trying to absolve himself of a guilt that she knows he's currently incapable of feeling.

She says, quietly, so no one else in the library can possibly hear, "I know you'll feel guilty about this when you start feeling again. I know you will. Because this _hurts_, Stefan. You hurt me this morning."

(Sometimes the hope gets the better of her, makes her say things that she knows he'll just laugh at, makes her say things that she knows won't change the circumstances they find themselves in.)

He doesn't say anything, just stares at the bruise, stares at his thumb brushing against it. He says, his face devoid of emotion but his voice sounding strangely, unfamiliarly sad, "Maybe I will."

She'll take what she can get when it comes to him because that's how it's always been and how it'll probably always be, and even though she tries to stop it, tries to run from it, she can feel that little bit of hope inside her growing exponentially larger.

-x-

(Later, years later, when they're back to their version of normal and their version of calm, he traces his finger over her hip. She's confused, asks him what he's doing, and he kisses her there, whispers an apology that's not necessary, not after all they've been through. But she accepts it, just like she accepts all his apologies in order to lighten the guilt that he's forever carrying on his shoulders. And he kisses her again.)


End file.
